Giles Goat-Boy

· Sold by Anchor
3.0
2 reviews
eBook
748
Pages
Eligible

About this eBook

From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human nature.

"[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times


Giles Goat-Boy tells the story of a human boy raised as a goat who comes to believe that he is humanity's prophesied messiah. In an absurdist universe that takes the form of a unversity--divided into an authoritarian East Campus and a more open West Campus--young George Giles rises to assume the title of Grand Tutor, the spiritual leader of the world and heroic defender of his people against the threat of a tyrannical computer system. Hailed as a "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" (Time magazine), Giles Goat-Boy has long been one of John Barth's most popular and multi-layered narratives.

Ratings and reviews

3.0
2 reviews

About the author

John Barth was born on May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland. As a student at Johns Hopkins University he was fascinated by Oriental tale-cycles and medieval collections, a body of literature that would later influence his own writing. He received his BA from Johns Hopkins in 1951 and his MA in 1952. He has held professorships at Pennsylvania State University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Boston University, and taught in the English and creative writing programs at Johns Hopkins.   Barth’s first novel, The Floating Opera (1956), was nominated for the National Book Award. The End of the Road (1958) was also critically praised. In 1960, The Sot-Weed Factor—a comic historical novel—established Barth’s reputation. Giles Goat-Boy (1966) was a huge critical and commercial success, after which he revised and republished his first three novels. Lost in the Funhouse, a book of interconnected stories, earned him a second nomination for the National Book Award. His other works are Chimera (1972), a collection of three novellas, which won the National Book Award; Letters (1979), an epistolary novel; Sabbatical: A Romance (1982); and The Friday Book (1984), a collection of essays.

Rate this eBook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Centre instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.